By Steve Pomper
What is the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act (GFJPA)? Well, any attempt at an accurate description would include words likely to violate the decorum of this family-oriented website. For one thing, the Act’s title is an egregious misnomer. Let’s take a brief look, focusing on the three elements the Act emphasizes.
George Floyd had a criminal history stretching back to 1998, including serving five years in prison for a home-invasion robbery. Floyd was allegedly passing counterfeit money at the time police arrested him. And he also had a long history of drug abuse. According to the Hennepin County M.E., Floyd reportedly had “11 ng/ml of fentanyl in his system.” The M.E. also told investigators, “Deaths have been certified with levels of 3 [ng/ml].”
The GFJPA lists three key elements:
- lowers the criminal intent standard—from willful to knowing or reckless—to convict a law enforcement officer for misconduct in a federal prosecution,
- limits qualified immunity as a defense to liability in a private civil action against a law enforcement officer, and
- grants administrative subpoena power to the Department of Justice (DOJ) in pattern-or-practice investigations.
Let’s take the last two, first. Many people believe qualified immunity pertains to cops’ being immune from criminal actions. It doesn’t. It applies to civil lawsuits. Without qualified immunity law enforcement officers’ personal possessions are at risk. They could lose their houses, cars, savings, etc.
In a criminal case, the standard is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt: 99 percent certainty. In civil litigation, the standard is guilt by a preponderance of the evidence: 51 percent. And when you consider the radical left already files administrative complaints against officers as just one tactic in an overall strategy to harass officers, the Left is certain to file frivolous lawsuits against cops, which some judges will allow.
For example, in Seattle last year, an officer received some 19,000 complaints to the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) for one incident during a George Floyd riot. Incidentally, an investigation showed the initial officer receiving the complaint was not the officer involved. And, video evidence showed the alleged offense, intentionally pepper spraying a child, never happened.
In Harlow v. Fitzgerald, the case that distinguished between absolute and qualified immunity, the U.S. Supreme Court noted, “public officers require this protection to shield them from undue interference with their duties and from potentially disabling threats of liability.”
The new standard would mean an officer could act without intent or malice, even make a legitimate mistake and still be prosecuted for a crime. This abrogates the necessary implied bargain struck between a police officer and his or her community. I’ll take the risks for you, even with my life, but if things go unintentionally wrong, you need to support me and give me the benefit of the doubt until it’s proven I don’t deserve it. This does not mean officers who truly violate department policies or the law won’t be disciplined, including firing and, when truly warranted, criminally prosecuted.
As for finding law enforcement agencies guilty of a “pattern or practice” (P or P) of wrongdoing, it is predetermined. I watched the DOJ do it to my department. Obama’s DOJ drove into town in a clown car driven by Jenny “Summer of Love” Durkan. They “investigated” whether the department had a P or P of use of force violations, found the department did based on made up statistics, and then inflicted a consent decree (settlement agreement) on undeserving officers (which is still in effect).
When city officials requested the DOJ provide information about the methodology they’d used to arrive at such a high percentage of violations, they refused. That decree has been in effect since 2012, and the media and city politicians ignore the settlement was controversial and consistently treat it as if it were universally welcomed.
After a brief though appreciated reprieve with President Trump, Joe Biden has picked up where President Obama left off. The DOJ has initiated investigations of Minneapolis and Louisville police departments for P or P violations—which they will find. Every other agency in America should consider themselves on deck.
Now, onto lowering the legal standards to convict a police officer. If I understand the federal legal definitions correctly, the change in standards eliminates “intent” as a factor in prosecuting a police officer.
Society, on its behalf, intentionally and repeatedly sends cops into dangerous, split-second life or death situations, which is why officers warrant a substantial standard of proof they committed a crime while conducting their duty. Eliminating intent seems, at the least, grossly unfair and, at worst, cruel.
The GFJPA will also hold officers unreasonably accountable for other enforcement actions. Whenever raw statistics show a law enforcement action impacts one race over another, such actions will be viewed as racially biased without considering any other possible influences. If more blacks are ticketed than whites, even if the officer works an area with a high black population—it’s racism. If more blacks are arrested than whites, crime rates by race are ignored and racism will be solely to blame.
So, human nature being what it is, officers may feel pressured to “balance” outcomes (equity). Maybe drive to a “white” area of town and write tickets there. But how will this work with arrestable offenses? De-policing.
Passage of the GFJPA will also mean the government will fund organizations such as the NAACP and La Raza (The Race) to oversee and influence how policing is done in a community. Left-biased organizations “policing the police.” What could possibly go wrong? Ironically, La Raza’s Minneapolis radio station was burned down during a George Floyd, BLM/Antifa, riot.
Peter Kirsanow explained the GFJPA this way to Glenn Beck, “It’s so ill considered, it’s incredible.” He continued, “We’re on this George Floyd train right now, where we’re upending so many of our institutions in our culture, and much of it is based on a flawed narrative. And that flawed narrative is that, of course, that cops are out there just executing blacks…. Black suspects are actually proportionately less likely to be shot than white suspects are.”
Kirsanow also said, “On an aggregate basis, are blacks more likely to be shot according to cumulative numbers? Yes. But the reason for that is blacks are vastly more likely to be involved in criminal conduct in which there is going to be an encounter with a cop. That’s the reason for it. In terms of crime rates, blacks are six almost seven, 6.8, times more likely than whites to be arrested for murder. Blacks are 2.74 times more likely than whites to be arrested for killing a cop. Those… figures are extraordinary….”
In Chicago, black criminals commit 90 percent of murders (mostly against black victims), yet Soros-funded “prosecutor” Kim Foxx (an advocate for gun control) largely refuses to enforce gun crimes in the city. And communities would also relax police hiring standards if the GFJPA passes to increase diversity. You know, important stuff like a person’s immutable physical characteristics.
So, the plan seems to be to lower the standards to become a police officer and then lower the standards to convict that lesser-qualified cop who is more likely to perform less proficiently than cops hired under the current more stringent standards. This is what America gets if the GFJPA passes. Might we suggest a call to your congressional representatives and senators?